Wadia family
Overview
Surat
Surat , also known as Suryapur, is the commercial capital city of the Indian state of Gujarat. Surat is India's Eighth most populous city and Ninth-most populous urban agglomeration. It is also administrative capital of Surat district and one of the fastest growing cities in India. The city proper...
.
Lovji Nusserwanjee Wadia
Lovji Nusserwanjee Wadia
Lovji Nusserwanjee Wadia was a Parsi from Surat, India and was a member of the Wadia family of shipwrights and naval architects.Known for his high standards of workmanship, Lovji Wadia secured contracts with the British East India Company to build ships and docks in Bombay in 1736...
began the Wadia shipbuilding dynasty in 1736, when he obtained a contract from the British East India Company
British East India Company
The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
for building docks and ships in Bombay (present-day Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai , formerly known as Bombay in English, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the most populous city in India, and the fourth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 20.5 million...
). Although the Wadia's would eventually come to be considered a Bombay family, many of them remained in Surat, where one branch of the family established a ship breaking
Ship breaking
Ship breaking or ship demolition is a type of ship disposal involving the breaking up of ships for scrap recycling. Most ships have a lifespan of a few decades before there is so much wear that refitting and repair becomes uneconomical. Ship breaking allows materials from the ship, especially...
yard (where ships are dismantled) that remains one of the largest of its kind in the world.
By the 1840s, the family was one of the leading forces in the Indian shipbuilding industry.
